Gone Whaling

I have been a very bad blogger this month. I’m sorry. Prepping new lectures for the courses that I’m co-teaching has taken more time than I thought, primarily because I’m covering the material more deeply than before. Getting home each night, I have been trying to be a good dad and husband until my loved ones fall asleep, and I have slowly put together several shelving units that we bought from Ikea a few weeks ago. We still don’t have any of our things yet…the container ship should have arrived last Thursday, so we’re just waiting for ours to clear customs, which can take 5-15 days.

Our weekends have been very full. The pictures here are from our whale watching trip on Aug 5 with the Clarks. We went on a great cruise put on by the Australia Zoo, which was Steve Irwin’s home. It was a bit surreal on the way out of Mooloolaba to watch videos of Steve from the last series he was working on--called something like “The Ocean’s Deadliest Creatures.” Unfortunately, the sea was choppy that day, and a lot of people were filling up the vomit bags that were readily available. Although we never saw a whale breach the water, we did see several pods of humpbacks during our four hour cruise. Will had a mostly good time, although he was more excited by the water spray than anything else. His mother fared more poorly, but was still happy we went.

This past weekend we went to the Ekka, a sort of state fair for Queensland. It goes on for 9 days, and has a huge mix of livestock competitions, exhibits, scary rides, and “Aussie” food. We tried a Dagwood dog, which I think is just a corndog, downed some “old style” ginger beer, munched fresh strawberries, and licked an ice cream cone together. We took a brief walk through the showbag pavilion. This must be uniquely Australian. Many companies (e.g., Cadbury’s, magazine publishers) throw together bags of goodies from their company and sell them in all sorts of combinations that cost between $2 and $20 at gigantic booths, with hundred of people moving like cattle from booth to booth. V. also watched a sheep shearing demonstration while I was soothing Will after he got some sunblock lotion in his eyes. I really would have liked to watch the butcher show--in which several cuts of meat were to be lectured about--but we had to cut our trip short due to our son’s next fastly approaching crash.

Thanks for being patient with my blogging. And I do plan to reward you with some new pictures very soon. Late last week I received a copy of the new iLife, which has some great features for posting photos on the web. I hope to have it mastered soon, complete with a new way to view our photos…

Some Peace

I haven’t written for nearly a week, mainly because our lives have become much quieter as we continue to settle in. On Sunday we said goodbye to our "old" friends, Patrick, Grass, and Isabella, who had come up from Sydney to visit us for a week. Unfortunately, our home is so inhospitable at the moment that they had to stay in a nearby motel. They moved from London to Sydney back in January. On the last day of their visit we drove up to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast (our second trip since arriving), where the surf, the beach, and the temperatures were simply perfect. Will (who turned 18 months old this week) discovered the wonders of playing with beach sand, but there was the worry that he would throw it in his face, so we had to watch him closely. By the way, this photo of Mooloolaba comes from Trig's flickr page, as I still don't have all our photos properly edited. We head back to Mooloolaba this Sunday, when we go on a whale watch. I promise more of our own pictures then.

I have been spending a lot of my time at work on my first lectures. I am also getting to know my new colleagues, who (surprisingly) represent a wide range of nationalities. My undergrads were just as charming during the second week of lecture, with many coming up to me during the break and after lecture to ask more questions about the material. Another pleasant surprise about Australian university life is the mixture of informality and respect between students and academics. The students are used to addressing their instructors by their first names, and I noticed that my colleagues always introduce themselves to students that way. However, the students are also very polite and appreciative of their instructors, so the informality in no way undermines a sense of faculty “authority.”

We have received word that the big shipment of our belongings arrives in Brisbane a week from today. It could then take between 5 and 14 days in customs before it’s delivered. That's nearly 3 months since it all left our home in May. We are starting to worry about what we are going to do with everything. Our townhouse is about 1100 sq ft., but we’re moving from a house that had about 4800 sq ft! We do have two large verandas, so we may be putting some of our inside furniture on the outside. Yes, I can hear Jeff Foxworthy saying, “You might be a redneck if…” I guess ten years in Atlanta had an effect on me after all.

Oh, and I just have to mention something I posted on another blog. I bravely ordered a chicken quesadilla at a restaurant on campus the other day. When the server brought it to my table, she said something like, “chicken kwehs-a-dill-a, sir?”

Si, muchas gracias!